Me: Thank you Mr. Saban for taking the time to sit with me to answer a few questions. Congratulations on your team making the playoffs by the way.

Saban: Thank you. I’m so happy for our team and fans.

Me: You don’t look happy.

Saban: I am happy.

Me: Um, are you sure?

Saban: This is my smile.

Me: ??????

Me: Um……ok. Moving on. So I know you say you don’t pay attention to politics and all, but surely you have some thoughts beyond football. For instance, taxes, what are….

Saban: Taxes? The Crimson Tide Foundation pays my taxes. Everyone should just get a foundation to pay their taxes.

Me: Uh, that’s not how the world work….

Saban: They pay for my house too. Everyone should try it. Then you can just focus on the “process”…Alabama football.

Me: Er….ok. Maybe we should stick to football then. So what are your thoughts on your upcoming opponent Washington?

Saban: What’s a Washington?

Me: Well to start off with it’s a state….

Saban: States???? Oh…those are type of things those know-it-all professors want to fill my players’ heads with rather than football. Look, I don’t have time for geography, we are focused on other things here. Wished those pointy-heads in academics would get that through their thick skulls.

Me: Ok, ok, forget that….it’s a football team, the one you play next. Your thoughts?

Saban: My thoughts? When is the game?

Me: December 31st.

Saban: December 31st??!!! Grrr….for Christ sakes! You people in the media just don’t get it. It’s all about the “process”. One game at a time? Pfft. Probably what they do at Auburn. Or Tennessee….winning those…what did Butch call it….championships of life? Almost makes me laugh. Almost. Then it makes me puke. Here we focus on one second at a time! What can we do to be better football players this very next second??!!!! In fact I already forgot your question, because I’m focused on the next second.

Me: Oh I am SO sorry…uh, are you still smiling?

Me: Nevermind. Ok, this is going nowhere. You have anything you want to say? Whatever.

Saban: Look, your world confuses me. Elections? Why elephants and donkeys? Will the super moon light the world on fire? When I get a text on my I-Phone 7, did magic trolls make that happen? I don’t know. I’m just a caveman football coach. I don’t have time for figure out such trivial matters. But there is one thing I do know. Pay me no less than $7 million a year and a free house and I’ll win you a shit-ton of National Championships that will make you forget that Bear loser!

But still, I can’t say that as I watched the results roll in on Tuesday night that I wasn’t in a state of shock. I had taken some comfort that in the last day or so before the election polling had seem to be swing back to Clinton. Besides, errors work both ways and I kept reading about how early voting and Clinton’s superior “ground game” was going to make a huge difference, so maybe Clinton would actually win much bigger than predicted! After all, a guy like Trump….this reality show celebrity unqualified self-centered boor could never actually get enough votes to win the highest office of the land, right?

Yet here we are. Donald Trump won the election, he will be the next President. How did we get here? First things first. This was a very, very close election. In fact, Hillary won the popular vote. Trump won several states (MI, PA, WI) by razor-thin margins. A very small voting shift back to Hillary would have led to a comfortable Clinton electoral college win. Many, many, many things could lead to a mere 1%-2% shift in results, so it’s likely when one person says it was one thing and another person says it was another thing, quite likely both can be right, at least as contributing factors. And anything that contributed at all could be combined with other factors to get to 1% to 2%. Plus factors are not necessarily independent of each other.

Still, in an effort to make sense of it all, I’m going to blog some thoughts….even if it is a bit scrambled, maybe incoherent, and may have jack squat to do with anything. After all, Trump won the votes of 60 million people……..the number of reasons behind those votes rationally have to be just about infinite. So who really knows? Still, I’m confused….so as self-therapy I’m going to write:

Candidates don’t matter that much – One thing that a lot of us thought was that Trump was such a historically bad candidate, so apparently unqualified, so offensive, that he would lose traditional Republican voters….not so much that they would vote Democrat instead, though that is something that at least used to be possible. But that they would vote third-party or maybe leave the choice blank. But the polling never indicated any sort of collapse of support, at least never for any length of time. But Trump will end up with just about the same number of votes as Mitt Romney received. In hindsight, I’m not sure that most votes aren’t just set in stone, and we all are now part of team D or team R and most will just support the team. Therefore the baselines for major party candidates may be pretty set and differences in voting may only be at the margins now.

Tolerance for ‘isms’ (racism, sexism,heterosexism, etc.) – These factors had to at least be discounted by Trump voters. Though I have a steady job and am doing well, so maybe it’s easy for me to say that these should be pretty darn big considerations. Perhaps for those who aren’t in a good situation, and feel that the powers that be aren’t doing enough for them, maybe it’s easier to discount the negatives if you think somebody will come in and blow it all up to help you…at some point you just start looking out for number one and are less concerned about the plight of others.Of course, just because Romney and Trump both are going to have about 60 million votes doesn’t mean it’s the same 60 million. Trump had to lose SOME votes for these reasons, and perhaps just made those numbers back up with those who have more racist, sexist, etc. tendencies. Anecdotally, I can say that I did run across a Facebook conversation in which at least two people posted that they didn’t think a woman should be “commander-in-chief” period. As it turns out those two people were women. Attitudes like this really do still exist, and it’s not just men.But Trump didn’t pick up any EXTRA votes. It’s Hillary that’s going to have 6 million or so less votes than Obama, and that’s why the margins are closer. (11/20 edit- They are still counting votes and Hillary is now within 2.5 million votes of Obama. Her popular vote lead is over 1.5 million votes. It’s not difficult to imagine that she may be within 2.0 million votes of Obama before all is said and done. And her popular vote win could well be over +1.5%. Not that any of this matters, but since I mentioned Hillary was going to be 6 million short of Obama, I thought I should make this correction.)

Rural versus Urban Divide – Republicans have been winning rural areas for quite some time. But in previous elections, there were some sections were Democrats could pull wins in some rural counties, namely in the Midwest. Obama won Michigan, Wisconsin, Ohio, Iowa, and Pennsylvania. But even in 2012, the advantage in these states began to slip. And now in 2016, they pretty much all flipped to Trump. These are all states Clinton lost and it’s because she literally won only the big cities in these states. Whether this is a systematic shift…these are just GOP voting areas now, or whether this is just unique to Trump, that he appealed to the “white working class” voter with his generic anti-trade ‘I’ll bring the jobs back’ rhetoric which at least meant that he paid attention to them (Clinton didn’t even set foot in Wisconsin and only reached Michigan at the last moments) remains to be seen. But it appears there really were voters who voted Obama who voted Trump this time.

Voters Vote On Gut Feel – It’s not like voters study for the test. Who has time for that? So there’s probably not a lot of research done. I think nowadays too, we are much more into identity politics. It makes it easier if we just know what side we are on. Then we can just go vote for our side. Plus to the extent we do go for research, we do so based on the same identity politics that feeds into preconceived narratives. Going to Drudge Report, Breitbart, and Fox News is going to give you a much different look at the race than going to Huffington Post, Mother Jones, and MSNBC. It probably really impacts your view of how big of a deal Clinton’s e-mails and Clinton Foundation were versus Trump’s University, Foundation, sexual misconduct, lack of payment of workers, etc. and even if you were aware at all of some of these things. We aren’t all operating on the same information, and that information is incomplete.

Elections Are Simply Exercises In Marketing – Clinton had many wonderful position papers on her website, very detailed plans regarding what she would try to get accomplished as President. But that doesn’t win elections. I think Trump almost has no talent. But there is one thing he does about as well as anyone, market the brand “Trump”. Dilbert cartoonist Scott Adams had been arguing all year that Trump was the more persuasive candidate. While he may well have been more lucky than good in his prediction that Trump would win (after all, he predicted a “landslide”, losing the popular vote can hardly be called a landslide win), he probably had a good point that simple superior messaging can hide flaws and make facts matter a whole lot less. Conning people is not admirable, but it is a skill. Clinton could raise the heck out of some money, but if you can’t translate that money into messaging, it doesn’t matter.

Other stuff – James Comey raising that they found more e-mails except they didn’t and it was never a new issue anyway but it was reported like it was. The many free hours of coverage that Trump generated meant Trump didn’t have to worry that much about fundraising. That our system is conditioned to make elections close (all incentives, whether it’s media coverage or political advisors all push for close elections). The electoral college allows the possibility to win the popular vote and still lose the election. Minorities may not have shown up quite in the numbers as they had in the past couple of Presidential elections. Hillary didn’t quite win the percentage of minority votes that Obama did. On and on and on…….

Black Swan? – I was reminded by a Facebook post (simply put by posting a picture of a black swan) of one more theory. Black Swan events are an idea developed by Nassim Taleb to describe surprise major events that seems rational in hindsight (and what is everything written above if not a rationalization) but never prospectively. Now I think the Trump win was somewhat predictable by the time November rolled around. But I don’t think anyone was calling this two years ago, or really even when Trump first announced his candidacy. (People would do will to REMEMBER this next time they hope a “weak” candidate wins the nomination for the opposition party! You NEVER know! The country is much better served by having STRONG choices from all sides!) – 11/20

Or maybe it’s none of these things. Regardless, what will Trump’s Presidency look like. If you are like me and think Trump is a con man, there’s already evidence pointing in that direction. For all of his anti-establishment rhetoric, the people he is bringing onto his team is in fact the establishment. Also, if you are like me and think Trump was a lot more interest in winning the election than he is in actually running the country, then we need to start thinking about what a Mike Pence presidency might look like as he may be the defacto President (he’s already in charge of the transition team). That would likely mean a very, very sharp turn toward right-wing conservatism.

However I do hope that maybe, just maybe that Trump will actually do a good job. That would be what is best for the country. He keeps surprising me, maybe for once it can be a surprise for the better.

So I started to write this article a long while back, but I realized that there was just SO much out there, so many reasons that I think Trump is…well frankly a terrible person…much less a terrible candidate for President, that I just couldn’t do it all at once. Plus, more and more comes out every day. Even now, there are women coming out who are accusing Trump of sexual assault and misconduct after audio of Trump seemingly bragging about such activities was released.

But even before all that, there are just so many reasons I think Trump is such a poor choice, historically so, that despite my misgivings about Hillary, I feel that she must be our next President. Below is just some of the many reasons (because it’s impossible to compile a fully comprehensive list) why Trump is terrible:

Trump “University”:

Ok, we’re all adults here, right? We all know this wasn’t a real university. Let’s not sugarcoat it, this was a scam pure and simple. Trump gets paid to put his name on it and make a promotional video that lends this stupid thing credibility (because of his supposed success in business). Then comes promises of access to high rollers and “apprenticeship” support. But instead you just get a way overpriced half-assed business 101 seminar. Another thing of note, they expected to receive payment in full before providing services, which is actually not the Trump way (see below).

Trump “Deals”:

When Trump talks about the “Art of the Deal”, he’s really just talking about ways to scam his way into money at the expense of others. One of his favorite techniques is to agree to pay an amount for a job and then not pay it after the job is done (usually with some excuse that the job was sub-par or otherwise not performed properly). He has the money to take it to court for a prolonged case, and he’s betting that whomever he is scamming doesn’t. Then he can settle it for pennies on the dollar and thus save. He would consider his actions smart and savvy. A lot of the rest of us would consider it sleazy. Other times, he just doesn’t bother to pay up at all.

Trump and his organization has been involved in over 3,500 lawsuits involving non-payment. And these are just disputes among the 1%. This deals with waiters and dishwashers and plumbers and painters…..the working class.

Remember those kids that performed at his rally and went viral, the USA Freedom Kids? Trump is accused of stiffing them too.

He is not paying his campaign staff. Some are no doubt just being very generous with their time. But certainly some expected to be paid. (At this point, here’s a “pro-tip”, if you are going to work with Trump, and I wouldn’t, get your agreements in writing! Better yet, get paid in advance.)

Trump “Real Estate”:

Trump represents himself as a very successful real estate mogul. But what Trump has done most successfully, especially in more recent years, is simply license his name to other real estate projects that he otherwise has nothing to do with. Investors then unwittingly go in, thinking if the real estate deal has the backing of successful real estate mogul Donald Trump, it must be a smart investment. They only discover later, usually after the project has gone belly up, that Donald Trump actually hadn’t invested a dime. Of course, you could say there’s a sucker born every second. But you see how one may be fooled, when the brochures literally say Trump is the developer even though he’s not.

Trump Lies:

Trump lies. Not in a politician spin that has a some truth but is misleading kind of way. Just outright lies, without a shred of truth.

Trump claimed the NFL contacted him about the debate schedule. The NFL said no.

Under oath, Trump was forced to own up to his falsehoods. Trump was suing a writer that wrote things about him that he didn’t like (which appears to be anything short of a declaration that he is the greatest man the world has ever seen). But testifying under oath, he was caught in lie after lie. For instance, he told the writer that he owned 50% stake in a project the article had said he had a “small” stake in. Under oath, he had to admit it was actually 30%. He was caught in lies 30 times in fact. And as this report says, the lies were “unstrategic – needless, highly specific, easily disproved”.

Trump was lamenting that if Hillary gets elected, she would appoint Supreme Court justices with liberal leanings and there would be nothing anyone could do about it. Then he says “Although the Second Amendment people, maybe there is. I don’t know.” What the hell is THAT supposed to mean? Well, a lot of people inferred that he meant that somebody might just take her out….permanently. Now I want to think the best of people, even slime balls like Trump. So I want to believe that’s not what he really meant. But let me say that a huge part of being President is being able to effectively communicate. That usually requires speaking in clear complete sentences, instead of the sentence segment fragment mumbo jumbo Trump seems to prefers. Otherwise you leave to everyone else to make inferences to try to figure out what you are trying to say. Words matter. It’s part of the job. If you can’t effectively communicate, you can’t effectively be President.

As if to make sure everyone knows that those what was mentioned above was no accident, Trump suggested that the Secret Service should disarm and see what happens to Hillary Clinton. Seriously.

Trump’s latest theme is that the election is rigged. You know, the one that hasn’t even happened yet. Now this is obviously not a ‘get out the vote’ strategy (why vote in an election if it’s rigged?). He has already decided he’s going to lose, so this is so he can say he didn’t lose, the election was stolen (you know, the one that hasn’t even happened yet). His brand is largely built on the idea that he is a winner…one that never loses. The thing is though one of the cool things about our democracy and why it works is we do our battles at the ballot box instead of with guns. The key to that is losers accept that the results are legitimate. Going around claiming that the election results are illegitimate (you know, the results from the election that hasn’t even happened yet) undermines that. Now certainly if there was evidence (which would be hard to have right now, you know, because the election hasn’t even happened yet) that something is amiss, he could and should bring that to light. Trump losing (and so far, he’s just losing in the polls, since the election hasn’t even happened yet) is not evidence of election fraud (shocking I know, but Hillary might, just might, legitimately get more votes than Trump).

Trump Foundation:

With all the talk about the Clinton Foundation, it doesn’t seem like the Trump Foundation, Trump’s own charitable organization, has received as much scrutiny. But when I read about it, it’s hard not to conclude that this organization exists as yet another Trump scheme.

First, there’s little evidence that Trump actually dedicates any of his own money to the organization (at least not since 2008). Rather it seems to exist as little more than a pass-through of other’s donations and Trump merely claims credit. (The example here is convincing one organization to donate $150,000 for a police group the Trump Foundation said they were raising money for and then turning around and donating exactly $150,000 to the police group, without any additional money.)

Trump has even used Trump Foundation money to buy self-portraits (because really, can you think of anything more worthy than making sure Trump has large portraits of himself?) To be clear, it’s illegal for charities to spend its money on political donations (bribery or not) or for the personal use a charity official.

That’s enough. Full disclosure, I thought Trump was a terrible person WAY before he ever announced his Presidential run, I haven’t newly arrived at this conclusion. When suggested that he could win the nomination, I even laughed. That’s how ridiculous I found the notion of Trump being considered for President. The lesson here I guess is to never just assume that 150 million potential voters are necessarily all on the same page as you are. So right now polling seems to indicate that things are looking good for Hillary. But until the votes are in, nothing is set in stone. Finally, after decades of campaigning (it’s only been a couple of years…really?), it’s just about time to vote.

I am one who will be voting for Hillary, but without a lot of enthusiasm. Now I am not sure how much I am being affected by years and years of media attacks, some of which certainly is ridiculous (Benghazi comes to mind). I’m also not sure how much I’m impacted as a male by subconscious bias against women in positions of power. I actually think that plays a role. All that said, even trying to adjust for those factors, I do think some of my discomfort is justified. The things that bother me include:

The Clintons have taken advantage of their political clout to enrich themselves. For those of us that think there’s too much money in politics, the Clintons are not people who shy away from that money. Bill takes the millions from a for-profit university. Hillary takes the millions in speaking fees from Wall Street, corporations, and other lobby organizations. They don’t really go out of their way to make sure that the operations (in both actuality and appearance) of their Clinton Foundation (which I do believe the preponderance of the evidence shows by and large does good charitable work) are totally separated from their government work. For those of us that think money buys undue influence regardless of whether there’s any specific quid pro quo, Hillary doesn’t seem like she really can credibly be the champion of changing that.

The e-mail thing. The reporting on this is frankly confusing, probably because of being in the middle of a Presidential campaign, competing interests either want you to think it’s a big nothing that should go away immediately or the greatest crime ever perpetrated against humanity. But from the things I read, I’m not that concerned over the supposed “classified” e-mails, as my understanding is that the true top-secret e-mails are on its own system. Maybe some minor information from the “classified” system may have leaked into discussions on the “non-classified” side of things. But my guess is that’s probably quite common.

My concern is that there was ever a private server for work e-mails at all. I’m expected to do all my work communication via my work’s e-mail and it shouldn’t be different for government officials. I think if I set up a private server to handle my work e-mail and my employer found out, they would find that very suspicious. This was then compounded by the decision to also use that same e-mail for private use. Once again, if I choose to use my work e-mail for private matters, it’s with the understanding that my employer still owns those e-mails.

So once it came time to turn the e-mails over, the Hillary team wanted to just hand over work e-mails. The problem is that they themselves made the determination of which e-mails where work-related and which were private. Personally I think once the decision was made to use the e-mail for both work and private purposes, she should have turned over all the e-mails. At the very least, a third-party should have been brought in to sift through them (what admittedly was probably an almost impossible task given the thousands and thousands of e-mails).

I am definitely of the opinion that Hillary is going to be more aggressive with foreign concerns than Obama has been. The people she has brought onto her national security team seems to support the view that it’s likely we will have more military involvement overseas, not less.

Issues of trust/spin. The lawyerly spin they often present to the public sometimes reaches the point of absurdity (it depends on the what the definition of “is” is anyone?). A good example was Hillary’s clumsy attempts to try to argue that FBI director James Comey had really confirmed her version of the e-mail issue. I think she was going for a A equals B and B equals C so A must equal C logic. A = What I told the FBI B = Separately, what I told you, the public. C = Comey said A was true. Therefore what I told the public was also true. Of course, this clearly falls apart because one, Comey just said he had no reason to think Hillary was lying, which is a different statement than saying she is telling the truth. And two, it’s quite clear Comey was not supporting Hillary’s version of events, and was making no statement in regards to what she was telling the public. So it just comes off as obvious spin.

Hillary clearly also doesn’t trust the press, so she is sometimes so reluctant to release information. This is sometimes to her own detriment. The whole pneumonia thing is a good example. Instead of just disclosing she had pneumonia and taking the time off to recover, she instead worried about how that would play given how some of tried to make her health an issue and tried to push through it. Then she was caught collapsing into her car, which provided far more fuel for the health issue than had she just stayed home and rested (and also was evidence that she wasn’t doing her own health any favors). Even when busted, the team tried to first say it was mere overheating (which probably wasn’t exactly untrue, just not the root cause) before finally coming clean.

I don’t think she was wrong in thinking that people would have raised questions had she come out saying she had pneumonia. And she probably really did think she could just stubbornly push through it. But while it sounds corny, I think most often, honesty really is the best policy. Yes, there would have been questions. But rest, recover, and come back strong and the questions will fade because you will prove that you are fine, because you are fine. Instead, those who have a question of trust received more ammunition.

All of that said, she doesn’t have to be the best candidate in the world. She only needs to be a better candidate than Donald Trump. Hillary is the establishment for sure. But she is also smart, capable, and experienced. In short, she is qualified to be President. And if she were able to enact the positions she has taken, for the most part I would say they would represent steps forward for this country. Is she my favorite candidate? No. But is she better than Donald Trump? Yes, and it’s not close in my mind.

As far as Trump and his issues go, that’s a post for another time. But I guess if I were to summarize, I would say Hillary is a bit of a capable but unsavory politician. Trump is an unsavory human being.

By my back of the envelope calculation, every second counts about $38 for Mylan (or about $3.3 million each day).

So here’s the usual market cycle, say for example, the HDTV. You first introduce the product into the market. Usually its price pretty expensively when you first start out. You are not in mass production yet so you are only going to be able to sell so many units, plus you want to recoup the costs of R&D and such. If the product gets a foothold into the market (like clearly the HDTV did), then you will enter a growth stage. As you are able to ramp up production, the cost per unit will start to drop and generally so will prices (as in a healthy market, you will have competitors also trying to sell units…plus you need to make the product more affordable so you can sell more units). The products will become more affordable to the masses. Eventually the market matures and each company will try to figure out how to hang onto share anyway they can, whether it’s pricing or maybe minor feature differentiators or what have you.

But as far as I know, nobody has ever died by not having a HDTV. Which brings me to Mylan and their EpiPen. The price of their product has reportedly increased over 400 percent since 2007. The point of the above is to state my belief that it can’t be because the price of production has gone up. As they have made more and more units, the price per unit should drop, not increase. So if it’s not the cost of production, then why are they selling EpiPens at a price of $250 per unit (though my understanding is you have to buy the $500 twin packs, singles aren’t available anymore) now when they could be sold at $57 per unit in 2007?

The CEO of Mylan responded by criticizing insurers and pharmacists and the health system in general, some of which may be well and proper. But it doesn’t answer the question, why did the price go from $57 to $500? Any answer that doesn’t address the question specifically is just noise. She said if she reduced the list price she couldn’t guarantee that everyone who needs a EpiPen would get one, but didn’t say why that would be (and I don’t think I even accept the premise that everyone who “needs” one is getting one right now).

So about EpiPen and Mylan…….EpiPen is NOT a new product. It was actually invented in the 1970’s by a former NASA engineer with taxpayer funding (the inventor did not get rich….it was made for public use). Mylan didn’t acquire the rights to EpiPen until 2007 (hmm….that’s when the price started going up…I’m sure that’s a complete coincidence!). Given the Mylan didn’t even develop the product, there shouldn’t be any R&D to recover and the manufacturing process should be well refined by now. In other words, I suspect production is cheap. (One more tidbit to Mylan, they moved their corporation to the Netherlands in 2014 to avoid taxes.)

The reason why I think price is up is the same reason that Mylan won’t talk about it. They are charging more because they can. It’s an fairly inelastic demand curve now (what’s the price you put on life saving???? On the other hand, you can’t sell EpiPens to people who don’t need then….dropping prices isn’t going to generate much more demand), though in fairness Mylan did do a lot of marketing initially to raise product awareness that did generate the level of demand you see now (though they have also taken advantage of lobbying and government legislation). And for various reasons, there’s no competition. It’s a monopoly and being a stock company, Mylan is just trying to generate as much profit as they think they can get away with.

Mylan has said they are offering discounts now, but that doesn’t really solve the problem. Not everyone gets the discount and even if they did, insurers are still paying those costs so the consumer ultimately pays one way or the other. Ultimately though, I think there needs to be recognition that there are some areas where the free market works great but some areas where it doesn’t. You need to have competition and consumers need to have choices, including the choice to not participate in the market at all. That’s hard to do when literally lives are on the line.

I can’t do it. I had planned to do the same kind of mocking of the Democratic National Convention as I had the GOP National Convention. I even started to write it….and it was turning into more of a college paper summarizing the thing than anything else. To be fair, in my eyes, this year’s GOP Convention was just so easy to mock. And really, I do mean this year’s, because in all fairness, generally in the past, you give either party four nights to put their best foot forward, they do exactly that. That this particular GOP convention was so uniquely odd this year is yet another flag against Trump having the skills to be President.

So instead, I’m just going to mention my favorite quotes from the Democratic National Convention and leave it at that:

“To the Bernie or bust people, let me just tell you, you’re being ridiculous.” – Sarah Silverman
Hey, I voted for Bernie too, so I get it. And I think we should push for many of things Bernie had stood for, including changing the nomination process. But you do have to realize that he lost. And you really generally don’t change the rules for any current contests midstream, you have to change them for the next time anyway. Make no mistake though, Bernie did good, he got some nice things into the Democratic platform.

“How we explain that when someone is cruel or acts like a bully, you don’t stoop to their level. No, our motto is, when they go low, we go high.” – Michelle Obama
This is what she tells her children when they are subjected hateful language from public figures and people questioning their dad’s citizenship and faith. More high road please!

“I want someone with the proven strength to persevere, someone who knows this job and takes it seriously, someone who understands that the issues a president faces are not black and white and cannot be boiled down to 140 characters.” – Michelle Obama
I thought this was a very effective summation and take down of Donald Trump, all without even mentioning his name. Very succinct too (still too long for Twitter, though, 231 characters).

“That is the story of this country, the story that has brought me to this stage tonight, the story of generations of people who felt the lash of bondage, the shame of servitude, the sting of segregation, but who kept on striving and hoping and doing what needed to be done so that today I wake up every morning in a house that was built by slaves. And I watch my daughters, two beautiful, intelligent, black young women playing with their dogs on the White House lawn.” – Michelle Obama
I’m not sure I would have even included this had it not been for the reaction of people who either don’t know history, don’t understand history, or want to hide from history. What I heard was a recognition of how far we have come as a nation. What other people apparently heard was ‘omg, she said ‘slavery’ and that’s probably not true and why did she even mention that and she should probably not even bring that up’. Or Bill O’Reilly’s odd point in “fact-checking” that the slaves building the White House were “well fed” and had “decent lodging”, which is so beside the point that it’s absurd.

“I can say with confidence there has never been a man or a woman, not me, not Bill, more qualified than Hillary Clinton to serve as President of the United States of America” – President Barack Obama
I have been giving some thought lately in regards to how unique it would be to have somebody serving as President who spent 8 years as First Lady (and let’s be honest, we all know she wasn’t a ‘Good Housekeeping’ first lady baking cookies), 8 years as U.S. Senator, and another 4 years as Secretary of State and would have a former President as her spouse. Whether that’s all good or not, that seems like a much better background than Trump’s career as a celebrity, scam-artist, and at best very mixed business record.

“None of us can raise a family, build a business, heal a community or lift a country totally alone. America needs every one of us to lend our energy, our talents, our ambition to making our nation better and stronger.” – Hillary Clinton
This is a vision for the country that we need to get back to in my opinion. We are all in this together.

To me, the difference between the two Conventions was night and day (or should I say midnight and morning). The GOP’s Convention was a disorganized mess pushing the politics of fear and division with a solution of a savior to save us all. The Democratic Convention was a well-ran (which again is typically true for both parties…) event that while warning against a potential Trump administration given his shortcomings, pushed a message of optimism and unity for moving forward to the future. That message is much more appealing to me, and right now I don’t see this choice as being close.

He’s totally going to add a “Trump” sign over the White House if he wins, isn’t he?

The Republican Convention was this past week, and if you are like most people, you didn’t really have time (or want to make the time) to watch. Well fortunately for you, I watched* so you didn’t have to. (*Ok, I didn’t really watch, I did what any sane person does if they want to pay attention but doesn’t want to spend hours watching cable news television, I read about it just like you did. Just go with it….I did watch Trump’s 15 hour acceptance speech and you know you didn’t, so I think I deserve a little credit!) Here’s everything you need to know:

Day 1: Make American Safe Again: Oh, they had themes for each night. But no worries, by-and-large, the speakers ignored the theme and talked about whatever they wanted to anyway. By which generally speaking was about how Hillary will get us all killed. And Benghazi! (No, that’s not from The Big Bang Theory. You’re thinking of “Bazinga!” Pay attention.) Lock her up! And then there was Melania Trump. I guess she told her speechwriter she wanted to sound like the first lady, and the speechwriter took it as literally exactly like the first lady….has happened to us all! (seriously, how do you think you can rip off a convention speech that was only eight years ago and think you won’t be caught?)

Numbers:Number of speakers who were/are television stars? 4 Number of speakers who were/are “Charles in Charge”? 1 Number of speakers with last name of Trump? 2

Line of the Night: “He will lead by leading.” – Rudy Guiliani

Day 2: Make American Work Again: First, the Trump campaign spent much of day pretending that Melania’s speech wasn’t partially plagiarized, even though they were caught red-handed. Second, the “Never Trump” movement finally succeeded……in delaying Trump’s nomination by about 15 minutes! But alas, Alaska’s last-ditch effort in procedural protest failed and Trump became the official Presidential nominee of the Republican party. This was also the night where party leaders made their obligatory appearances while somehow saying Trump’s name as little as possible (looking at you Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell). Not much talk of jobs, unless the jobs being made available are for lynch mob to go after Hillary Clinton, led by Chris Christie’s “trial”. (Hey, the pitchfork and torch industry does need a pick-me-up!) Oh, and then Ben Carson dropped the pretenses and just pretty much said directly that Hillary is one with Satan. Hey, if you are going to claim somebody is evil, may as well go all the way, amirite?

Numbers:Number of speakers who were/are television stars? 2 Number of speakers who are mediocre (by LPGA standards) golfers? 1 Number of speakers who run fighting organizations? 1 Number of speakers with last name of Trump? 2

Trolling of the Night: Donald Trump Jr. used lines almost word-for-word from an article in The American Conservative by F.H. Buckley. When the internet took the bait and shouted ‘plagarism!’, Buckley pounced to say ‘aha, but I wrote Trump Jr’s speech!’. Well-played sir.

Day 3: Make America First Again: Wow, this was straight out of WWE. Ted Cruz is making a speech, maybe he’s going to go “face” and endorse Trump and the crowd is digging it. But as the speech continues, he totally turns and goes “heel” and urges everyone to “vote their conscious”. The crowd turns on him and eventually starts chanting “we want Trump!” And then Trump appears in the crowd! The only thing missing was Trump rushing the stage with a steel chair to chase Cruz off the stage and then playing some theme music and the victorious Trump poses to the fans. Also, Mike Pence accepted the VP nomination, and proved he can fill the role of conventional VP candidate. Plenty of making sure you still remember that Hillary is a bad, bad person.

Numbers:Number of speakers who were/are television stars? 0 (hmm, must have been an oversight) Number of speakers who gave an awkward wave that sorta looked like a Nazi salute?1Number of speakers with last name of Trump? 1

Line of the Night: “A tsunami is coming! His name is Donald Trump!” – Phillip Ruffin, apparently in support of Trump and not warning of an impending disaster.

Day 4: Make America One Again: And that one America? It’s the one you are going to totally die in! The GOP turned the fear volume up to eleven. Danger Will Robinson Danger. But there’s one man, and one man only, who can save us all, Trump. And Trump accepted the Presidential nomination….after a very, very long speech that meandered all over the place…that I listened to. Mostly. It was definitely on my television. Anyway he used a lot of words, whereas if he just wanted to get to the point, it would have been ‘Clinton = danger, Trump = savior, Trump out’. But getting to the point (ever really) is not really Trump’s style, is it?

Numbers:Number of speakers who were/are television stars? 0 (guess TV stars are just for openers) Number of billionaire speakers? 2, bringing the total to 4 for the whole convention….with 1 one more being a former billionaire. Number of speakers with the last name of Trump? 2

Line of the Night: “Nobody knows the system better than me, which is why I alone can fix it.” – Donald Trump – explaining why he is the savior.

So Trump has basically laid out his strategy, Hillary is bad and evil incarnate and he is the savior (just trust him, he is). It definitely felt like the GOP was more uniting behind an anti-Hillary movement rather than pro-Trump. It will be interesting to see what balance the Democrats strike this week between pro-Hillary versus anti-Trump in response.